What Is the Information Theory of Ageing?

Why do we age? It sounds like a simple question. For most of human history, the answer was equally simple: bodies wear out. Like a car engine, eventually things just break down.

Harvard professor Dr David Sinclair thinks that's wrong — and his Information Theory of Ageing offers a very different explanation. One that changes everything about how we think about growing old.

Your body is like a computer

Think of your body as a computer. Your DNA is the hard drive — it contains the code that runs your entire biology. Every cell in your body carries a full copy of that code, all 3 billion letters of it.

But here's the thing: having the code isn't enough. Your cells need to know which parts of the code to read. A skin cell and a nerve cell contain identical DNA — but they do completely different things. What determines this? The epigenome.

The epigenome is a layer of chemical instructions that sits on top of your DNA, telling each cell which genes to switch on and which to leave off. It's the operating system. And unlike your DNA, which is remarkably stable, the epigenome is highly sensitive to the world around it.

What goes wrong as we age

When you're young, the epigenome is pristine. It knows exactly what each cell should be doing, and it keeps everything running almost perfectly. But over time — through stress, DNA damage, lifestyle choices, and the simple passage of years — the epigenome starts to lose its precision.

Cells begin to forget what they're supposed to be. A skin cell starts behaving a little like a nerve cell. A nerve cell picks up characteristics of a liver cell. The information is still there — the DNA is largely intact — but the ability to read it correctly has been corrupted.

"Ageing is an identity crisis of the cells," as Sinclair describes it. "The genes are still there. But the control systems, the labels that tell the cell which genes need to be on and which should stay off — that gets erased over time."

The scratch on the record

Imagine a vinyl record. The music — the information — is pressed into the grooves. But if you scratch the record, the needle jumps. The music is still there, encoded in the vinyl. But you can't play it correctly anymore.

That's exactly what ageing does to your cells. The information of youth is still present in your DNA. The backup copy hasn't been deleted. It just can't be read properly anymore. The scratches — caused by decades of cellular stress and DNA damage — get in the way.

Sinclair's radical claim is this: if ageing is a problem of corrupted information rather than irreversible damage, then it may be possible to reinstall the original software. To remove the scratches. To make the record play beautifully again.

His laboratory has already done this in mice — and human trials are now beginning.

What this means for your supplements

The information theory of ageing also explains why certain molecules have such a profound effect on how we age. NAD+, for example, is the fuel that powers the enzymes responsible for maintaining epigenetic information. When NAD+ levels fall — as they do significantly after the age of 40 — the body's ability to preserve and repair that information deteriorates.

Supporting NAD+ levels through its precursors NMN and NR is one of the most direct ways to help your body maintain the epigenetic information that keeps your cells young and functioning correctly.